Childish Gambino Releases New Summer Songs

According to Variety, rapper and singer Childish Gambino dropped two brand-new summer songs on Wednesday. Gambino’s new songs “Summertime Magic” and “Feels Like Summer” were released without warning July 11, surprising his fans. Gambino’s latest songs are available on YouTube and other streaming services under the title “Summer Pack.”

An hour after the two new songs were dropped, a press release revealed that “Summertime Magic” will be the first song on Gambino’s new album. While there is currently no release date for this forthcoming album, “it seems likely that it will by the time of Gambino’s North American tour with guests Rae Sremmurd and Vince Staples, which launches Sept. 6 in Atlanta.”

Gambino, who announced his new deal with RCA Records in January, has now released a total of four new songs, two of which were first performed on Saturday Night Live. One of those songs, “This Is America,” which has a hard-hitting music video, has received national attention and has been viewed on YouTube over 6 million times. Gambino’s other single “Saturday” goes along with the summer theme of his two new songs, leaving “This Is America” as a politically and racially charged stand-alone anthem.

His new label deal with RCA Records was first announced during the week leading up to the Grammy’s, originally stating “that new music was coming later this year, and although a rep quickly revised that statement to be less specific, Glover promised he will perform new music at the next installment of his ‘Pharos’ festival, which he premiered in Joshua Tree, California in 2016; those performances were recorded and released on the vinyl edition of his latest album Awaken, My Love!, which garnered three Grammy nominations and won one.”

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This new forthcoming album will reportedly be the last album that the artist uses his stage name Childish Gambino, going back to his given name Donald Glover later on. When Variety asked him about retiring his stage name back in January, Glover said, “I’m really appreciative of this [award] and I’m making another project right now, just, you know, to make.”

“But I like endings and I think they’re important to progress. I think like, if a lot of things had death clauses in them, we wouldn’t have a lot of problems in the world, to be honest. So I think endings are good because they force things to get better.”